


smile like you mean it

by ollie_outie



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, Other, Pining, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ollie_outie/pseuds/ollie_outie
Summary: this started as a five plus one fic but now it's just a bunch of short drabbles about different times and reasons Gamzee smiled.





	smile like you mean it

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as @clown-of-madness if you wanna come shoot me some prompts (and by that I mean 🅱lease)

The old goat has to get his department on soon, and that's cool, that's okay, he's probably got some wicked miraculous seagoat things to do, shits probably way more important than your own squalling self. Thing is though, is that he just got back, heaved himself wet and dripping onto your beach to say hello what feels like seconds ago. You know it's been longer than that, and pushing now could break the good mood that brought him to you and let you hang off his great neck in a soaking cold hug in the first place, but you get so motherfucking lonely here. Nobody but him to visit or talk at, just Goatdad, and on nights when there's not even him, the waves to listen to you.  
You tangle your fingers tighter in his fur, trying to hold on for all your little wrigglerish self is worth, begging for just a few more moments of company, of not having to be alone. He ain't having none of of your shit though, snorts all disgruntled at you, saying _Hush wiggler, let the fuck go,_ and you just want to hold on tighter, want to keep him in your sight and your prongs dug in his fur, but he's lifting his great old head now, and you know he don't care what height you drop from, that he'll shake his head til you do if you haven't by the time his heads gone far as his body will let him, so you let go and only fall a few feet, nothing hurt except maybe your pumpbiscuit as you wait for him to swim off again. He sits a minute though, looking on you with oculars seeming much too wise for what he is, before licking a stripe across your face, and most of you besides. He lets out another snort, this one a fair bit more amused, seeming to tell at you _It's okay_. Least ways, that's how you're gonna interpret it, as him trying at comfort.  
He moves back into the water, only his head peeking out, but he looks back at you, like he's waiting on something. He does a quiet little bleating thing when you just stare back, all _Well?_ before you start a bit and say at him “bye dad,” with a smile.  
He nods and gets to swimming off, no more waiting or turning back on your account. The smile you were holding slips a bit, and you go back inside with an empty feeling in your guts  
-  
You keep trying to get your smile right, the lines of dark grey paint on your otherwise white face seeming too soft and too sharp both at once.  
Honest truth is not a bit of your face feels right tonight; eyes look crooked, the curling points that usually sweep all around your jaw weren't lining up proper and got scrapped altogether, and the waxy smooth familiarity of the paint tonight seems to be replaced with sticking cracks, warping your face with shifting valleys past a point you know the mug in the mirror for your own.  
You for a second consider going bare faced, but even the thought of going without, of leaving yourself that much more open, runs shudders up and down your spine.  
In the end, you wipe off the crooked grey, painting soft white in its place so when you look back at the mirror a face pale as stardust stares back at you. It ain't as detailed as you're used to, don't conceal half as much, but it helps, hides the little twitches of expression you could never quite stop from making.  
You give the mirror a smile, more tired than your own dopey grin, not as mirthful as the wide smirk of your usual paint, but it makes your face just familiar enough that you can leave the ablutions block.  
-  
The brother you've been chatting at is mighty strange in his ways, haughty as fuck, and insists on calling you _Highblood_ to the point you're half sure he forgot your name.  
He sure as fuck don't seem to be forgetting much else though, eating up each passing comment, looking for orders or highblood wisdom or whatever in the motherfuck else. Feels almost nice, to have a body actually listen to you, even if Equius pushes a bit in his strange ways.  
He's been harsher past few nights, used to be he'd say you were doing things wrong as a highblood, were too soft mayhaps, like the purple in your veins meant you couldn't do a sweetness onto somebody. wasn't meant to harm, far as you can tell, almost felt like some blunt concern, like he worried you'd be culled for that shit.  
Lately though, lately he's been harsher, calling you like a failure, saying you were a disgrace to your caste. Words seem crueler now, as you reread chat logs and find that he's pulled reasons from your conversations to call you such. Your religion, your absent lusus, your pies, the fact that you were talking to half your hatefriends at all, each little bit of yourself offered to him previous now laid out like they were insults, calling you worthless for all but what's swimming in your veins.  
And the thing is, you don't think he's all too wrong, only things you'd really contest are your messiahs and your friends. So you say such at him, for all he doesn't seem happier for it.  
You don't want your bros upset at you though, so next time he gets harsh at you, you just tell at him _OkAy bRo,_ figuring he was upset at your rebuke last time. He don't seem much happier with your aquecense, but at least lets the conversation move past it. Soon you're giving your husktop an absent smile, glad to have a hatefriend to talk at.  
-  
Been what might be sweeps since you first tried the slime, first let that glowing green past your maw and felt chilled and warm and sweet as any motherfucker could be. Took you a few lonely perigrees to try it, took hungry nights with no signs of white fur nor curving horns on the horizon before you got desperate and stupid enough to place something as was beaten into you as not food onto your tongue, but motherfuck if it wasn't like your own bit of motherfucking paradise when you did. Wasn't even purposeful, like. You'd just woken up, belly cold and empty like it had been for perigrees now, stretching out of your coon covered in slime that was glowing so soft and so pretty. And you, sleepy stupid and never the brightest besides, thought that looked downright miraculous, and did as your bloodpusher said, gotta follow where its at, right? And what your pusher was saying just then led you to licking a long stripe of that miraculous green up off your arm. Tasted strange, sweeter than you'd thought it would, rich and chemical. Wasn't the taste that set you licking more off yourself though, was the humming buzzing feeling what came with it, tingling on your tongue and fangs and soothing the aches in your belly and pusher alike.  
Might not have been your best moment, still sitting in your coon and lapping up sopor of your fronds, not even baked as to let the high settle. Might have been that you had so much of the slime that you fell right the fuck back to sleep, tongue and head buzzing, stomach not full but not quite as empty and hard to notice just then anyways.  
Might have been that right before you drifted back off you gave a little smile to the universe, for giving you something sweet as this numb bliss.  
-  
Seagoatdad didn't teach you much, was too busy for that shit most times. Meant what lessons he did deem important enough to give needed to be heeded extra careful, you figured, and set yourself to following the bits he gave you.  
Listening to the empress you got on lockdown, easy as pie. You don't really like what her schoolfeedings got to say on blood, don't figure one color got any worth over another, except maybe for painting, but you do at least keep the order of the spectrum in mind. Know you rank near the top, janky ass fins hanging by your ears and little stunted gills sitting all pretty next to your grubscars marking you as some of the highest blood on land.  
Only other big thing he told you was _Stay out of the water,_ said seadwellers were more trouble than they're worth, and you'd be too teensy weak to handle one proper anyway.  
This one was harder, seeing as how your hive sat all right up on the sandy edge of the sea, waves almost knocking at your front door during high tide, but you tried.  
So now, with rows of even, sharp teeth tearing at your shoulder, a haughty, wavy voice hissing out that you deserved to be hurt for daring to sit so close to waters edge, you feel you've a right to some anger, to some rage.  
You were careful not to get too close, have been since your lusus first warned you about these finned fuckers. Was this fish faced motherfucker as strolled onto your beach, was him who strayed too far from where he belongs.  
So, you'll send him back.  
He goes down real fucking easy with a swing of your club, didn't seem to expect you to fight back, not after those first couple seconds of stillness. Ain't down for true yet, staggers back on slightly wobbly legs, but you're thinking this motherfucker ain't strong as he thinks himself. Prove that thought when he goes back down just as easy the second time you swing, didn't even make an effort to dodge, just looks at you with strangeness in his oculars as you come bearing down on his shoulder. Finally jerks away at that, swipes with lacquered and jeweled claws, rakes bloody lines across your face, tries to jump away from you and your clubs while your visions gone all cloudy purple.  
Something in you starts laughing at that, at this dumb fish fucker as thinks you'd let him get even an inch away.  
Everything's still blood blurred, but that's why messiahs granted you hearing ducts, gave you strong sniffer, gave you that beautiful ringing rising motherfucking _Song_ in your pan and horns that tells you _Someone's close, Someone's AFRAID._ You can feel yourself grinning as you move on the seadweller, teeth bared in threat and promise as you listen for his stumbling steps on sand and feel the way fear sings in his pan, high and glorious to know you inspired that, that cullbait though you may look you are able to bring others low like this.  
Time blurs now that you've got him screaming, now that you're both howling in pain and rage alike, only felt in glimpses when you land a particularly vicious blow, or when he scratches and bites your hide to shreds. Could be hours later far as you know, but eventually, his blood and pan matter both are staining your clubs nice and pretty, only a few shades pinker than your own.  
Same laughter from before bubbles out of you now, finding humor in a motherfucker so stupid, so weak as to fall to you, someone weak enough to get culled by your lanky, graceless ass.  
Your laugh dies as you wash purple and violet off your fronds, watching the colors swirl in the sea together.  
-  
your shoutiest of brothers ain't quite what you were expecting, nubbier than you thought any troll could really be, blunt horns and teeth and claws, and blunt words especially. for all that though, he still has some sharpness all up in him, sharp gaze on all your hatefriends, willing you all into behaving with voice sharp and salty enough to make up for all he don't seem a threat.  
could make a motherfuckers pusher break, how harsh karkat acts, when you know under all that he's got a world of sweetness to him. like he thinks he ain't allowed to get his care on for his friends, ain't allowed to show his feelings honest and true so he's got to bury it under mountains and mountains of attitude.  
brother's still shouting, you think. he wandered away from you ages ago, but his voice does carry, seems almost like it could reach you out in the stars if he was so inclined. brother’s gone away, and you miss him for all you still hear him. figure that's a good a reason as any to seek him out, and stretch your lanky self up to go ambling towards the ruckus he's making.  
Karkat’s mostly yelling at the universe right now, you think, though he does break away from that now and again to direct words towards the bodies around him. You catch a bit about _“grubfucking, bulgesucking, moronic wastes of space,”_ and figure that's about right. Brother don't seem himself when he ain't angry, much as you wish you could pull him back from that, wish you could lay fronds to cheek and sooth your best friend down from the rages he's always working himself into.  
you almost don't want to take him away from this one though, he seems to be having a good shout, fronds waving around while he stomps and gives voice. it's the kind you know he'll feel the tiniest bit better after, not true better, and not for long, but he'll sit for a bit at least, might even let you bring him some food and if the universe is in the mood for handing out miracles he might even eat some.  
it's a wistful sort of smile stretching your mouth, you know, thinking on your brother letting you take a bit of care for him, letting you help him in ways he'd up and motherfucking expire before admitting he needs. you can't quite drop it though, looking at him still ranting, still stomping and shouting like his words alone will fix whatever mess he's all stuck up on now.


End file.
